Land of the free? Trump mulls Israel-like ‘profiling of Muslims’

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump believes that the US should take a page from Israel’s playbook and encourage law enforcement to keep a closer eye on Muslims.

The outspoken Republican has previously advocated barring Muslims from coming into the US and, in the wake of the mass shooting in Orlando carried out by gunman Omar Mateen, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, he now thinks profiling is a “common sense” tactic.

Speaking on CBS Face the Nation about how the Orlando killings might have been prevented, Trump talked up checking on mosques “respectfully” as a way of tackling radical Islam.

The perpetrator of the worst mass killing in US history was a New York born Muslim. When asked what kind of policy could have prevented Mateen’s rampage, Trump suggested “looking seriously” at profiling.

“I think profiling is something that we’re going to have to start thinking about as a country,” he said.

“You look at Israel and you look at others, and they do it and they do it successfully. And you know, I hate the concept of profiling, but we have to start using common sense,” he said.

Following last Sunday’s attack, Trump returned to his December comments that called for a “complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,”surmising that now “many are saying I was right to do so.”

At a speech in New Hampshire, he talked about taking a hardline on certain people trying to enter the US, and promised to “suspend immigration from areas of the world where there is a proven history of terrorism against the US, Europe, and our allies.”

“The bottom line is that the only reason the killer was in America in the first place was because we allowed his family to come here,” he said, referring to Omar Mateen’s parents, who had immigrated from Afghanistan.

Barack Obama rounded on Trump with stinging criticism in response, telling a Tuesday press conference that the Republican’s proposals “won’t make us more safe.”

“We now have proposals from the presumptive Republican nominee for president of the United States to bar all Muslims from immigrating into America,” Obama said.

“Language that singles out immigrants and suggests entire religious communities are complicit in violence… Do Republican officials actually agree with this?” he added.

“It won’t make us more safe, it will make us less safe, fueling ISIL’s [Islamic State, ISIS] notion that America hates Muslims.”